He glanced over at Jaret as they walked down the cobblestone streets of Banner. The fortifications loomed behind them and the moon shone clearly over the double walls. The gate was not far behind—a massive construction of iron, stone, and wood that had ground closed at sunset, leaving only a dog-gate through which people could enter or leave, and even that was heavily guarded by the regular forces of the Eighteenth who were stationed here.

“It sounds like he makes a habit of that,” he replied, turning his attention back to the street. It was a heavily fortified city and probably far safer than Rylar since the majority of its occupants were Guardsmen, but he was still on edge around alleys after the ambush on Kilin and Jaella. He kept part of his attention on the shadows as they walked. “Latris was yelling at the scout captain when I got there. Sounded a bit like a bluejay, all screaming and chiding.”

Allen didn’t feel too bad about making fun of the second in command. Complaining about your superior officers when they couldn’t hear was a fine Guard tradition. As long as you didn’t do it where they could hear, or share your views with the men who followed you, you were fine. Done right, complaining was good for morale. He figured he was just keeping up the standard.

Jaret laughed.  “He does too, just like a brainless bird. All harmless noise. He must have spent half an hour berating Heles about the ditches until Heles asked, very politely mind you, if the senior captain would be so kind as to show us the right way to dig the trenches.” He chortled again and stooped down to pick up a rock off the ground and skim it across the cobblestones. Unlike a regular city, there were few people out on the streets. The Guards were either at their posts, sleeping, or already in one of the many pubs that served the fort. “Latris was out of there so fast you could have lit a torch off his backside.”

The rock skipped off a raised cobblestone and spun in a lazy circle, and Allen watched it for a moment before he started to get chills up his spine.

The rock wasn’t falling. It was slowly spinning around and around in place, circling the cobble that it had struck and slowly rising into the air in an ever widening spiral.

“Jaret!” he called, reaching out with one hand and hauling the other lieutenant to a halt. “Look at that.” Allen nodded at the stone, the skin on his arms and the back of the neck tickling as if in a breeze.

It took Jaret a moment to notice what was happening, and then he stood stock still, his face frozen. “By the sons of mercy,” he muttered. “What’s going on with that rock?”

The spiral had widened to a few feet now and was at the height of their knees. A dim red glow began at the heart of the spiral and was swiftly gaining in strength.

“Not a clue,” Allen replied, setting his hand on his sword hilt. “But it can’t be anything good.”

“Aren’t you supposed to know about weird things,” Jaret asked, edging back from the spiral. “What with having a Mark and all?” He looked over at Allen.

Allen let some of the trapped air in his lungs hiss out between his teeth. “If you figure out what I’m suppose to know, let me in on the secret,” he replied, his stomach rebelling a bit at the eerie quality of the light in the spiral. “As far as I can tell, the Mark just sits there and looks important. Your guess on this one is as good as mine.”

“Huh,” Jaret grumbled, drawing his sword and looking around them. No one else was in sight on the street. “All right. What do we do with this?” He took up a guard stance a short distance from the steadily growing spiral, holding his blade at a slant in front of him.

Now would be a good time for his mark to do something useful, he thought. But no divine knowledge seemed to be forthcoming. He could sort of feel the mark beside his eye without touching it or looking into a mirror, as if it were written into his spirit as well as his skin. The slight presence of it was always there, waking or sleeping, almost as if it were really ivy that had grown into him.

Ivy growing on his skin wasn’t exactly helping at the moment though. The spiral had grown as high as their shoulders and widened another couple of feet. Mostly the mark just felt like it should itch and it didn’t. He reached up with his free hand to run it over the ivy, and he could feel a slight tingle through the veins of the plant, as if it were alive with energy.

Nothing new there. He could heal bruises and people were always asking him for blessings, and the energy in both of those had some sort of relation to the mark. He didn’t even know what a blessing did, other than that people believed it would bring them luck. He could just feel the heat of the energy when it passed out of him and into the item, like the little girl’s necklace when he’d seen the vision of his goddess.

“Well, we can’t leave it here, whatever it is,” Allen replied, thinking about their destination at The Tilted Cup. “I really would have preferred to have a few drinks before fighting a…spiral, or ghost, or whatever this is.”

“Ghost?” Jaret asked, his blade twitching from side to side nervously. “But ghosts are just children’s stories. Tales by the fire.” He looked over at Allen, standing still for a moment as his voice went a bit thin before he turned back to the spiral, which was as high as their heads now. “You’re telling me there are really ghosts out here?”

Allen shrugged, and then he drew his sword too for good measure. No reason to get edgy about it yet, but it was good to be prepared for anything. “Solen’s beard if I know what sort of cursed thing it is.”

He watched the spiral for a moment, and noted that the red glow was stronger than before, covering the base of the spiral completely.

He stepped forward and swiped his blade through the spiral, but there was no effect other than a tug of air that pulled on the sword and twisted it out of its path and out of the spiral. Rather what you’d expect from a whirlwind. He settled into a guard stance of his own, across from Jaret. They were just going to have to wait and see what happened.

The spiral was as wide as three men and taller than their heads now, and it seemed to have stopped growing. The red glow began to seep upwards through the thing, its pace quickening with every moment.

Shortly, the entire spiral was alive with a dark red glow, like banked firelight, but less pure somehow. The hue seemed to ooze throughout the spiral, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Goddess,” he muttered to himself. “If you’re out there, this would be a good time for help.” He remembered the last blessing he’d given in Rylar and the vision of the goddess that he’d seen, where she’d stood in the forest glade beneath the crescent moon, and he tried to call back the sense of that meeting.

The moon waxed gibbous over their heads, and he cast a glance over his shoulder to look at it. The cool purity of that light steadied his nerves as he turned back to the…thing. Whatever it was.

The unsettling red glow intensified throughout the spiral, and he called to Jaret, “Get ready for it. I think something’s about to happen.” Jaret’s face looked grim in the light cast off from the spiral, and the hue made his skin look as if it were coated in blood.

Two pinpricks of red light began to burn in the spiral, floating like eyes at its center, and then the entire spiral sucked inward into itself, collapsing into the rough outline of a man.

Allen could make out the shadow of weapons and armor in the outline, but the man appeared as if in silhouette before them, only the edges of his body visible. The figure was taller than either of them, with long hair past its shoulders and a great axe in one hand. It held a small buckler in the other. It was hard to get a good look at it. Its body seemed to flow and fade into the shadows, but it was always outlined by that red light as if it were a shadow cast by it. The two pinpricks of light that had appeared in the spiral now blazed from the shade’s eyes.

“I think you were right about the ghost!” Jaret called, sidestepping around the thing as he swung at it. The blade passed harmlessly through the shade, tossed aside again as if by an unseen wind.

At that moment, the silhouette turned to face the boy and raised its axe, attracted by the sound or the movement.

“Jaret, move!” Allen called. He didn’t think anything good would happen if that thing managed to connect. He lunged in towards the ghost, and if it had been a living man, his strike would have taken it just above the hips and disemboweled it.

As it was, his blade was just knocked aside again, with the same off-kilter twist and pull that he’d felt when he’d attacked the whirlwind.

The thing moved like liquid, as fast as a striking snake, and its axe darted through the air just as Jaret moved back, catching him along the arm.

Jaret screamed as if it a red-hot iron had bit his skin and stumbled back from the shade. A dark line appeared on his arm where the shadowed blade had struck.

“Anya’s grace!” Allen shouted as he launched himself at the thing again, striking through one leg and then its head. He stumbled out of the way as the thing turned back to him, apparently uninjured by the strikes. That darting axe swept down at him, and he threw himself out of the way, tumbling across the cobblestones. He landed with a thump against the wall of a building at the side of the street, but his armor kept the impact from rattling him too badly.

“Jaret!” he called again, looking to where his friend had fallen. The boy had dropped his sword and scrambled backwards from the shade, one hand wrapped around his arm where the dark line smoked.

Allen forced himself back to his feet. This wasn’t looking promising. Their weapons hadn’t even touched the thing, and it had put Jaret down with barely a scratch. He dodged forward again, moving in front of the shade and trying to stay out of its range as he struck at it twice more, to no effect. His blade passed through the thing’s chest and shoulder as he moved past it.

If he couldn’t hit it, maybe he could at least get it away from the boy. He turned towards the thing again, moving so it was between him and Jaret, and he barely got out of the way as the shadowed axe struck towards him again. He dodged it and returned a strike to keep the thing’s attention as he backed down the street. It flowed towards him across the cobblestones, the sickly red light moving with it.

He dodged in again, hacking at it, and mistimed the shade’s riposte as it struck back at him. The axe blade swept in under his guard and sliced across the front of his armor, and he felt a slight burning line edge its way across his stomach.

He tried to turn with the blow, to move himself out of the shade’s advance, but it moved without any need for breath or balance and flew towards him, its shadowed shield slamming into him with an impact as if he’d been kicked by a horse. A wave of spiking pain flowed through his body, stabbing forth from the shoulder where the shield struck him.

His head snapped back as he flew back from the impact, and his back slammed into the opposite wall of the alley, the stones of the wall slamming into the back of his head and snapping it forward again as he slid to the ground. His vision went blurry, and as much as he tried to move and force himself back to his feet, time seemed to progress at a snail’s pace and his body only twitched in response to his commands.

“Tea’el sabaraih coma meth!” he thought he heard a woman’s voice shout. And an odd blue haze filtered through his vision. It was rather pretty, he thought dimly, a nice color. Like the northern lakes.

His mind refused to move faster. Had he been doing something else…. What was going on? Why wouldn’t Kilin stop giving him drinks? He hated being hungover in the morning.

He looked woozily around. The King’s Mead was dark tonight. Why was there a moon in the pub?

It was a nice moon.

A lithe body hurtled past him and towards the other color of light in the pub, the one that wasn’t as pleasant. He wondered why the light was two different colors. Was there a bar fight going on? Had Kilin hit him on the head with a mug again?

The woman’s voice shouted something else, and a cry of pain screeched through his ears, painful.

“Killin, stop cr…crying l…like a girll,” he slurred, trying to stand up again, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. His friend was no good in a fight. He had to help him.

He pushed himself off the wall behind him and fell forward onto the ground. He tried to gather his legs underneath him, and they obeyed this time with a sluggish response.

He got himself up to his hands and feet, wobbling on the cobblestones. When had the pub redone its floor?

Another screeching cry of pain cut through his ears, and he jerked his head in response to it, the night partially resolved itself around him. This wasn’t The King’s Mead, and it was Jaret in trouble, not Kilin. Some shade thing had attacked them.

He pushed himself unsteadily up to his feet. Where had his sword gone and what was that blue light that was darting around in front of him.

He blinked his eyes a few times to try to clear his vision as he looked ahead of him. The red and blue were entangled with each other now, and now separate again, moving around each other.

Another shout of something incomprehensible came in a woman’s voice, and the red light shuddered in response to it. Twin streaks of blue slashed through the pinpricks of red that made up the center of the the shade, and another screech nearly split his head open.

He groaned as his hands went of their own will to block the sou nd from his ears. His head felt three sizes too big and as fragile as a teacup. There was someone pounding on a door somewhere and it was echoing through his head.

A moment later, there was someone under his arm, a soft and thin form pressing against him. Long hair brushed against his arm. This was much nicer than the pounding on the door, he thought.

“Come. Easy,” a woman’s voice said, as it kept him upright and walking forwards. Another form pushed itself under his other arm, taller than the first one, and its shoulder dug into his ribs as it supported him on the other side. Definitely not as nice as the first one.

“Come on, there’s a guardhouse not far from here,” the woman’s voice said. “We can set him down there.”

He stumbled through the night with someone under each arm, but it was hard to think of who they were. Did he know these people? Flashes of drinking in The King’s Mead came back to him again. Were Kilin and Jaella carting him home after he’d got drunk with Kilin again? That didn’t seem quite right.

He caught a glimpse of the moon shining down on him, and in his haze he thought he could feel the cool weight of its beams resting on his skin like the icicles in the north. The coolness began to seep into him, like melting ice, and when it met the heat and pounding in his head and neck, the heat faded.

He drew a shuddering breath and his vision cleared gradually, becoming steadier as the moonlight washed through him.

As the pounding in his head receded and the heat gave way to the chill crystal feel of the night, he realized Jaret was holding him up on one side. The other lieutenant was almost as tall as he was, and the edge of his armor was digging into Allen’s side.

He didn’t recognize the woman who was holding him up on the right at first, but as his head cleared, he noticed her long blond hair shining pale and luminous in the moonlight, and she wasn’t wearing any armor. He’d seen someone like her before, not long ago; where was it?

As they crossed another street and a lantern illuminated her for a minute, it cast its light over the soft curve of her cheek and the leather tunic and breeches she was wearing. He tilted his head down to get a better look at her.

Blue eyes, oddly shaded by the night. But clear blue. He’d seen those eyes earlier, though they’d been flashing with more stubbornness then. Now they looked tired.

“Mera?” he asked, his voice rough. What was one of his scouts doing here carrying him through the streets?

As he asked the question, the answer and the rest of the events of the evening came back to him.

He reached one hand up to his head in a wince, but the pain had nearly faded, and he lowered it again feeling a little foolish.

The two supporting him stopped as he spoke, but they didn’t move out from under his arms.

“Allen, are you alright?” Jaret asked, sounding worried. “That was a nasty blow that put you into the wall. I wasn’t sure you were going to stand up again.”

Allen drew in a long and deep breath, slowly letting it fill his lungs and trying to feel if anything was damaged. There were no spikes of pain from injured ribs. His head was also feeling almost normal again.

“I think I’m okay,” he said. “Let me stand up.”

The two disentangled themselves from him, but each kept a hand on his shoulders, ready to catch him if he was going to fall over again.

But he was steady on his feet, and as he tested his balance, he tilted his face towards the heavens to look at the moon. Its cool face shone down serenely over the fortifications of Banner.

“Steady enough,” he said, turning to look first towards Jaret and then to his other side at the Leusi scout, Mera, who must have been the source of the blue light he’d seen during the battle with the shade. His memory of what had happened was still blurry, and the events after hitting the wall were all jumbled together. But he could put a few pieces together.

Somehow Mera had been there and been able to drive off or kill the shade, when his and Jaret’s weapons had been useless against it.

He studied her for a moment, but she appeared utterly calm, almost relaxed, though there was that trace of fatigue around the eyes.

She grimaced slightly at him and turned her face away from him as she answered the unspoken question. “It was a blood revenant. A shade of a dead warrior. Someone summoned it.”

Their hands moved off his shoulders as it was clear he could stand on his own. He nodded slowly. “How did you hit it?” he asked, which was the most important question that came to his mind.

The Leusi woman returned him a perfectly calm gaze that revealed nothing. “Sometimes the gods answer prayers, Lieutenant, if you know how to ask.”

She reached up and brushed the mark at the edge of his eye with her fingertips. “And sometimes they ask much in return.” She studied his face for a moment, without the stubborn anger in her eyes that had seemed to be there when they’d met. Their clear blue shone in the lantern light as she added, “I think you must know something about that.”

“And perhaps they keep asking, or you would not be standing now,” she continued. “I’ve never seen a man take a strike like that and stand again unaided only a short time later. I had thought at first that the revenant might have broken your back when it flung you against the wall, but there was no time to check on you.”

“How were you there?” Allen asked. He hadn’t seen her on any of the streets.

“I was following you,” she replied easily. “On the rooftops. I didn’t notice the revenant forming at first and wondered why you had stopped, and then it took me a minute to find a way down. I was only close enough to keep you in sight.”

Allen thought about that for a minute. He wasn’t pleased that one of his scouts had been stalking him in the night, even if it had turned out for the best. “Why were you following us?” he asked, and she gave him another unreadable look.

“I’m not going to complain, given the circumstances,” he added. “But I’d like to know why.”

She reached out again and almost touched the mark beside his eye, but she pulled her hand back this time before touching his skin. “I had never seen such a thing before, and I needed to know more about the one who carried it. I suppose you could say it was curiosity.”

Well, that wouldn’t be the strangest thing someone had done when they’d noticed the mark. He’d had desperate women literally hand him their children and ask him to take them to a better place. He’d had to explain to them that he knew nothing about an afterlife, and he certainly didn’t know how to take someone there. Without killing them anyway, but he’d left that part out. Some of them had followed him for a while, until he’d managed to lose them in a crowd or past some guards.

In that perspective, someone following him around on the rooftops wasn’t as strange as it could have been. Especially since she seemed a little odd in the first place. Although, he noted to himself, he wasn’t really one to talk.

“All right,” he said, coming to a conclusion. “But next time, just ask me if you can come along.”

He paused for a second and then chuckled as he turned and started walking back towards the camp. He didn’t feel much like going to a pub anymore. “And maybe you can scare the revenants away sooner the next time.”

As they walked away, he didn’t notice the gleam of red eyes and a lean, low form in the shadows behind them.

The priestess had changed out of her traveling clothes and into a long, pale red dress with roses embroidered along the edges and down the sleeves. Anya’s symbol. Perhaps it was a ceremonial thing, or maybe just what she wore when she wasn’t traveling.

“Priestess,” he greeted her. What was she there for, he wondered. “What can I do for you?”

There were only so many priests and priestesses with the Legion, but he hadn’t expected to see Nalia again so soon.

She smiled at him as she wrapped her arm around his and turned to walk with him. “Good afternoon, Lieutenant. Have you heard?” Her fingers ran along the sleeve of his uniform and played with the fold of the cloth as she pressed a bit closer to him.

He tried to ignore her, but it was difficult. He couldn’t take a step without her body brushing against his.

Since his choice was either continuing to walk or to stop and let her wrap herself around him some more, he kept walking. Besides, as much as he didn’t want to start anything with her, she was attractive. There wasn’t much of a downside here. “I’m afraid not, lady. What’s the good news?”

“I’ve been assigned as the head healer for the cavalry cohorts,” she said, smiling as she tilted her head at him. “Isn’t it wonderful? We’ll have a chance to see each other more now. I was so regretting the end of the caravan and the lack of your company.”

He kept his gaze fixed on the tents they passed rather than look over at her. Well, something would have to interrupt the otherwise pleasant walk. Fabulous. One of these days he wouldn’t be surprised if she were waiting in his bed for him.

But what he said was, “Lady, the cavalry cohort is honored to have you. Your gifts will be needed.”

It didn’t do to upset the clergy too much. There were never enough healers for the legions and they were always in demand. Pragmatically, he supposed he should put up with her. And he wasn’t really sure why he wasn’t interested in the first place. A bit of a puzzle there.

The bigger puzzle though, was the events of the last few weeks, and whether they were connected. Insulting Thaesil in the guard barracks, and then the ambush in the alley, the next ambush on the caravan, the Huntsman in Cilis. What was going on in the kingdom and were the events connected?

“Nalia,” he said as they walked out of the tents and into one of the main roads running through the camp. “Perhaps you can offer your advice on something. Or divine insight even.”

Nalia tilted her head towards him and smiled. She continued to play with the folds of his sleeve and her hip brushed against him.  “It would be my pleasure, lieutenant. What is on your mind?”

He thought back over the events that had been occurring and hints he’d picked up from the king and Jaesil. “Something seems to be going on in the kingdom,” he said. “I’m not sure what it is. But bandit attacks are increasing and they look more like an organized army than the ragtag groups you’d expect.” He paused, and thought about the attack on him in the barracks. Had those men really been after the necklace from Baron Vreis? Perhaps Thaesil had even sent them. Jaella had warned him that the count might try to avenge the insult.

“And a band of armed men invaded the guard barracks in Rylar somehow,” he said. “They got past the sentries and attacked a lieutenant there. Then there’s the Ghostwood and the Hunter.” He paused and looked towards the south, where Nitharn lay hidden out of sight.

“I have the feeling that something is going on there,” he said. “I saw one of Cerias’s servants in Cilis. He spoke to me.”

Nalia’s hand stopped, and she looked at him more seriously. “The Lord of the Hunt sent a physical messenger to you?” she asked. “That is very rare. Usually the gods speak in dreams or through desire.”

She smiled again. “Passion comes from the gods, in all ways. Whether it is a passion to help another or a passion to touch. They inspire us to be more than we were before.”

Allen had never much appreciated theology and he still didn’t much like the idea that the gods ran everything. It seemed to take something away from him. Some part of his meaning. “I like to think they just emphasize certain parts of life,” he replied. “Highlight them. That they bring a greater passion to life, but they don’t direct it.”

Nalia reached up and brushed her fingertips over the mark beside his left eye. It seemed like people always wanted to do that and see if it were real. After seeing Tylea’s mark in Rylar, he understood it better. There was something fascinating about seeing a mark on someone. They didn’t look like a tattoo. It was more as if the skin became translucent and gave depth to the colors of the mark, and sometimes as if the mark floated above the skin.

“You are closer to the gods than most men, lieutenant,” she said. “And more than most clerics too. Despite what you think of the gods, I think you will do the right thing.”

He tried not to grimace. Talking to priests was difficult on the best days. “About the events in the kingdom, lady, have you heard anything recently? About something happening?” he asked.

Nalia let her hand drop back to his arm. “Nothing much, lieutenant,” she replied. “I’ve only heard that the churches are supporting the king more than usual this year. The nobles are causing political difficulties and sometimes priests are dismissed from their posts with the noble families. Perhaps they think we will be too biased in our work.”

Allen nodded. “I can see the difficulty.” And he could, at least about priests being biased. But if they were going to support the king instead of the nobles, he was glad of it. Whatever the reason.

“Do you know anything about these marks?” he asked, indicating the ivy beside his eye. “What do they do?”

Nalia considered the question for a moment and then shook her head. “I don’t know about that mark, lieutenant. But usually, someone with a mark has gifts like a priest or priestess, but different. Some connection to the deity they serve. I understand that it’s a bit different for everyone.

“You, for instance, can heal yourself, I hear.” She looked at him and smiled again. “Are you certain that you do not serve Anya?”

“Fairly certain, lady,” he replied. “I understand that her mark is always a rose.”

“Well, you never know how things may change,” Nalia said, studying the mark beside his eye again. “Perhaps even the gods can change.”

“It would make things simpler if it were Anya,” he said. “But the gods seem set in their patterns.”

“Perhaps not forever,” Nalia replied. “Healing is like life. Things must change and grow. Perhaps even the gods are like that.”

“Perhaps,” he said. It seemed a moot point. “Have you heard what any of the other Marked are capable of?”

“Ahh.” She paused for a moment to think. “I can tell you what I know from my studies, but it is general information.”

She paused again to collect her thoughts, and then said, “I have heard that one marked by Cerias can see into the darkest shadows, even beneath a new moon, and weigh the burden on a man’s soul. They are known as good judges, and they tend to act for justice.”

Had the Huntsman in Cilis been acting for justice, he asked himself. It certainly hadn’t seemed like it. Two bandits dead and trying to strangle him just to deliver a message?

Nalia continued, “Anya’s marked tend to be healers, but they can also cause the land to be more fruitful. Many priests also have that gift, and it’s the main reason why the people praise us and want a priest in their village.”

Something familiar about that gift nagged at him for a moment, but he couldn’t think of what it was.

“Yoneth very rarely marks anyone, but his marked are supposed to be able to see into the future. Alyssa’s are able to remember everything perfectly and excel in logic and study. Kaisa’s are able to inspire passion in others and to also know the desires of those they touch. And they are able to calm as well as wake the passions.

“Solen’s chosen are skilled in war and tactics. A marked general is a fury on the battlefield. They seem able to perceive every instance of the battle at once, to know what is occurring, and they know how to turn the events to their advantage. They seldom lose, either in war or games of skill.

“Corian’s marked, like his priests, are able to preserve foods against the winter, to banish blights and heal damage from frosts. But they are also able to cause crops to grow in the most inhospitable climates, and to make them thrive, even long after they were there.”

Nalia’s hand wrapped around his arm. “I don’t know much more than that, I’m afraid. Perhaps I could help in some other way, lieutenant?” Her hip brushed against him again.

Solen’s fire, he thought. What was he supposed to do with this priestess? He should have just slept with her to begin with and maybe she’d have stopped pursuing him. But for whatever reason, the idea wasn’t appealing, and so he tried to extract himself from her. It was almost like a dance to get unwrapped from her, and she wasn’t helping. But at least she wasn’t literally throwing herself at him either.

The dance left him holding her hand as he removed it from his arm. Too polite to just drop it, he bowed slightly over it instead. Hopefully it didn’t give her any more ideas. “Thank you, lady,” he said. “It’s been very informative. I should find Jaret before the evening, however. I promised to meet up with him.”

Nalia smiled. “I won’t hold you back from your meeting, lieutenant. I look forward to seeing you again.” She took her hand back and turned to glide away. A few steps from him, she looked back over shoulder and gave him another slow smile. “Soon.”

Then she turned around the corner of a lane that cut through the camp and was gone. Thank Alyssa for that. At least she’d given him something to think about.

So the nobles and the clerics were having some difficulties as well. And the king and the nobles were perhaps more at odds than they usually were too. Add to that, that the king seemed to expect some sort of trouble from the north and maybe from Karn. Of course, Aciel was always expecting trouble from Karn.

The three legions forming here in the North hadn’t been constituted as standing legions since the War of the Three Kings with Leale, eighty-odd years before. It was a drain on the treasury and the Guard to rebuild them, and the king would not have done it without a good reason.

Allen wondered if the legions would stay in the north when they were fully formed and trained, or if they might be detached to the Karn border, to reinforce the pass through the Kestrel mountains that divided the two kingdoms.

Whatever was going on in the kingdom, he didn’t think it boded well. Someone was going to get hurt, whether it was the king and his supporters or the ones who went up against them. That was the main reason the nobles were so problematic. They were capable of stirring up a civil war, and people across the kingdom would die, killed by their own people. It wasn’t a pretty thought, and it was one of the things the Guard was established to try and prevent. It was why they kept such an eye on the nobles. It got under his skin that he didn’t know what was going on.

He took his oath as a Guardsman seriously. It had been the better part of his life for the last year and a half. And, really, he supposed he didn’t have much else that gave his life meaning. All he had was this mark and his work and that was it. A few friends. No family, no permanent ties to anyone, no ground to stand on.

Just visions and memories that flashed in his mind now and then, somewhere in that great grey blank of his past. His mind felt whole, and not like something was missing, but he couldn’t help thinking there was a difference between being whole and being sane. He wasn’t always sure if he was sane. Who was around to judge him, after all? Just the laws of the kingdom. And laws detached from human context were incomprehensible to him. Where was his human context? Everyone else seemed to have it.

A different thought flickered through his mind, and he swore to himself as he pull his thoughts away from that line of thinking. He’d made his peace with not knowing his past. He’d built a new life for himself. There were people in this land that he cared for, and that was enough. It had to be.

Maybe he could try praying for divine insight about all of this. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried. He’d spent some evenings in the past begging whatever deity was behind his Mark to show itself, to make things clear to him. It hadn’t worked. It hadn’t even been until the child’s necklace the month before in Rylar that he’d even seen his goddess. She’d never shown herself to him before that. Not in three and a half years. And he didn’t know why she’d chosen to do so now.

Maybe it had something to do with all of this. All of the events going on in the kingdom, and people trying to kill him, as if he had some connection to it. Even the king had been quick to fit him into his plans, and Juslir had given him that messenger’s dagger like another string of obligation around his neck.

What was going on, how did it involve him, and what didn’t he know about it? It seemed sometimes like everyone knew what was going on and who he was supposed to be besides him.

He growled beneath his breath and swore at himself again for thinking that way as he told himself to get it together. He had to be at least thirty and he was acting like he really was three and a half, as if he’d been born when he’d lost his memory and woken up beside the wood. Ridiculous.

What had brought all of this doubt on so suddenly anyway? He’d barely blinked when the men had burst into his barracks and tried to kill him. That at least had seemed fairly normal. Now he was perfectly fine and healthy and he was having doubts here? Solen’s beard….

He felt like smacking himself.

Was worry about the kingdom really depressing him that much, that he was doubting himself again? He thought he’d put that behind him in the first few months he’d been on the Dhara. When he’d decided that life wasn’t meant to be fair. You just dealt the hand you were given.

And if you couldn’t remember your past, then you just had to make a better future. And he wasn’t going to change that decision. It meant too much to him. It was the ground that he was missing before he’d decided on it. He’d make his own life, and he wouldn’t let it go to waste. He’d do something important. Serve the kingdom, save the people, find meaning in this mess.

If there were nobles rising against the king, he was going to crush them. Whatever it took. He’d take pleasure in wringing their necks.

They weren’t going to kill the people here. And they weren’t going to start a war. Not if he had anything to say about it.

He shook off the rest of the doubts and tried to fall back into his usual mindset. Task, purpose, function. It was all straightforward. Just find the problem and fix it. Take whatever steps needed to be done.

Where the Yoneth was Kilin these days anyway. He’d been assigned to the 11^th, down towards Karn, somewhere. And Jaella too. They’d lucked out in getting an assignment together. And where the bloody fires was that humor he’d misplaced somewhere in the last few minutes of this meandering. It’d better get back soon or he was going to be poor company for Jaret.

He touched the mark beside his eye and felt the ever-present hum of it there, like energy flowing through his skin. Well, Goddess, he thought. One of these days, you’ll have to tell me who you really are. And maybe when you do, you’ll tell me who I was, too.

Because I am not what I was. I don’t know what it was, and so I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to be something else. Something new. Though, who knows, maybe they’ll end up being the same thing.

Wouldn’t that be a trick.

He chuckled slightly. It was about time to go and find Jaret, so enough of this moping about. He couldn’t really complain about his life anyway, he supposed, not when he had women like Nalia interested in him. Whether he returned the interest or not. Jaret had been falling all over her when they’d met.

He turned towards the third infantry cohort’s tents, and headed towards the lieutenants’ rows. He’d ask around until he found where Jaret had set up, and then he’d gather him up and they could set off to the Tilted Cup for a few drinks before it got too late. He’d need to be up pretty earlier to gather with the scouts and see what was going on in the area.

The new legions under the royal mandate were being trained beneath the shadow of the forts, and so each had a temporary addition to its regular Guard contingent. The officers at the forts were fairly pleased with the deal, since it meant they could enlist the trainees for some of the less pleasant tasks, like the legion’s ever-popular ditch digging.

It was something of a byword in the legions that a soldier had more use for his shovel than for his sword or shield. And that was even with the steady fighting the Guard was exposed to. Even if the nobles were behaving, which would be a minor miracle, the borders of the kingdom were in a constant state of low-intensity conflict.

The caravan rolled into Banner a bit past midday, and after handing it over to the resident quartermaster, he rounded up Jaret and reported to the commander of the 9^th Legion.

The Legion was gathered outside the walls of the fort, and to their discomfort and the amusement of the regular contingent they weren’t allowed to build the Legion’s standard defensive earthwork, so their white tents looked rather bleak arranged across the field. General Kostir’s tent was in one of the back rows and there was no difficulty in locating it. All of the legions used the same pattern for their camp layout.

Two Guards were standing watch at the entrance to the tent and a fairly steady flow of people and messengers moved through it. After a brief wait, they announced Allen and Jaret to the occupant.

“Junior Lieutenants Delais and Revarn reporting from the supply caravan for reassignment,” one announced.

After a brief pause and the sound of shuffling papers, a gravelly voice from the inside replied. “Send them in.”

The flaps of the tent were pinned back and when they stepped into the dimmer interior they had to pause and wait for their eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight outside.

A stocky older man in the black and grey of the Guard sat behind a camp desk to the left of the entrance. Papers and the occasional map or book were scattered across the desk, and what looked like a minor disaster of parchment was strewn across the floor beneath it. After a minute, Allen realized that the commander had just decided to use the floor as extra space.

He moved to the front of the desk and saluted. Jaret was right behind him. “Junior Lieutenant Delais and Revarn reporting, sir.”

The commander glanced up at them for a moment and then went back to writing something on a piece of parchment. A minute later he finished, returned his quill to its rest, and returned their salute.

“At your ease,” he replied as he looked them over. His mouth twisted into a slight grimace. “I’m General Kostir, commander of the Ninth. I expected you and the supply caravan two days ago.”

“Unexpected delays, sir,” Allen replied, evenly. “An ambush early into our trip and then a minor problem with a grass cat attacking one of the drivers.”

The commander waved one hand in dismissive gesture. “I’ll read the report. You have it with you?”

“Yes, sir,” Allen said. He’d spent the better part of the evenings during the last week writing it up as they approached the fort, and he handed it over with a trace of regret. He didn’t have any use for it, but he was a bit loath to see it join the impersonal piles of parchment scattered around the tent. It was foolish, but he felt like there should be a more respectable end for it.

The commander took the report and dropped it on one of the piles by his feet. “Good then. You’re reporting to who is it now?” He shifted a stack of parchment to check under it for another of the charts on his desk. “Scout Captain Della and the third cohort infantry?” He grunted briefly and nodded. “Welcome to the 9^th. You’d better head off. The third cohort was on training maneuvers this morning, on the west side of the camp. And the scouts headquarters are with the first cavalry cohort, which is in its usual place.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied, nearly in unison, saluting. If the commander was any guide, and he usually was in the legions, the Ninth was going to be one of those legions that didn’t stand much on formality. Just function. It was a refreshing change of pace after the almost choking formality of the capital. As they turned to head out, the general stopped them.

“One last thing,” he said. “Don’t make any trouble with the townsfolk around here. We’ve had enough of that already, and I will personally flatten the next Guardsman to harass one of the village girls or who thinks it’s funny to steal a goat in the middle of the night and put it on a roof.”

Allen tried to hide a bark of laughter as he turned back to the commander and saluted again. Jaret didn’t manage quite as well, and the commander gave him a chilling glare as a snort of laughter escaped him.

“Yes, sir. I’ll remember that,” Allen replied, his face about to crack.

Fortunately, he was able to drag Jaret outside and down the road between the tents before he buckled over laughing. A few wandering Guardsmen glanced over at him but kept moving on their way.

“A goat!” He chuckled at the image of a goat on a roof. “See, Jaret, there are high points to serving in the legions.”

“Aye, like getting flogged for laughing at the commander,” Jaret replied, looking around a bit uneasily, as if waiting for the commander to appear out of thin air.

“Not at him, just at the things Guardsmen do when they get bored,” he replied, still grinning as he straightened up. “Let’s go find our billets.” He looked around to grab his bearings, and then started walking towards where the first cavalry cohort should be.

“Meet me at The Tilted Cup tonight?” he asked Jaret. He intended to keep in touch with at least one of the Guards that he knew here, even if he didn’t know him that well. Without Kilin around, it was going to be a bit harder to meet people, and he’d decided to take his friend’s advice and get out more. “It’s inside the fort, third street after the gate.”

“You’ve been here before? I thought you were at Legion last year, east of here,” Jaret said, referring to the last of the forts along the northern border, and the one closest to the Vale of Dreams. The first of the forts was Shield, to the west. They’d passed south of it on the way to Vallum, before turning north on the road to Banner.

“I passed through here a few times,” he replied. “Scouts get around. The commanders are always sending us off as messengers when they can’t find anyone else.”

Jaret agreed easily enough, and they parted paths at the next road when Jaret turned towards the third cohort’s billet.

He arrived at the cavalry cohort’s headquarters, which was another tent, just in time to hear the end of a dressing down from someone with a snide voice.

“And you’ll keep them in line, or else I’ll have your hide before the commander for insubordination!” the voice said. It sounded male, but it was a bit high-pitched and it grated on the ears.

A thin man with an impeccably cut uniform and short dark hair stormed out of the tent as Allen approached and gave him a flat stare when he noticed him watching. In short order, the man was gone around another row of tents.

Allen pushed back the flap on the tent and entered with some hesitation. “Ahh, Lieutenant Delais reporting to Captain Della as the new scout patrol leader,” he announced after a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the interior.

A woman in a slightly wrinkled uniform that looked as if it had been slept in and then hurriedly pressed was standing in front of him and glaring past him out the tent after the man who’d just left. Her lips were pressed firmly together and she had a lean, edgy build. Her sleeves were rolled up and the muscles along her forearms were clearly defined. She reminded him a bit of Captain Raeli from the Dhara, although he’d never seen Raeli with a wrinkled shirt.

Her gaze shifted to him and lost none of its crystal hardness. “Well. And are you going to give me trouble today too? The rest of the lot have been giving me Solen’s own time of it. Some one of our idiots stuck a goat on a roof the other day, and now the commander had his second in here throwing a tantrum.” She glared again out the door.

“No, sir,” he said. “No goats here.” It was a bit easier this time to hide his smile, but it must have shown through in his eyes, since her eyes bit into him again.

“Right,” she said, huffing out a breath. “I’ll believe that when I see it. But if you cause me any more trouble, I’m going to flay the hide off your back and hang you upside down from a tree, and then feed you to one of the arvalhim if I have to find one myself.”

“Yes, sir,” he replied, since it was usually the safest answer. “You’re Captain Della I take it?”

The woman turned around to another of the camp tables set up inside the tent. “So they tell me, and you’re the new patrol leader are you?” She picked up a list off the table and turned around to him. “Guess what, Lieutenant, you just got assigned to goat duty.”

She handed him the slip of paper. “Your scout patrol is gathered together in the tent next door, waiting for me to give them a dressing down. That list there has their names on it. Since you’re new and all, go make an impression. And if I catch any of you putting any other farm animals on a roof…”

“Yes, sir,” Allen said. “Arvalhim food.” He thought he almost caught a sparkle of laughter in the captain’s eyes as he replied. It hadn’t been more than a minute, but he decided he liked her. Maybe it was the similarity to Raeli, who’d been one of the fairest captains he’d ever known, even if she’d had a tongue that could blister the deck at forty paces.

She snorted and gave him a brief nod, and pointed at the tent flap. “Go scare the other idiots into behaving then. We have work to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Allen said, and saluted, before he turned to head out of the tent.

This was going to be an interesting assignment. He hadn’t been in the camp for more than half an hour and he’d already been assigned to play herd leader to what sounded like a bunch of misfits. And he was going to have to not to laugh at them, or it’d just undermine his credibility. He stopped outside the tent to compose his face and settle into the right frame of mind.

He had it after a minute. A mixture of Armsmaster Urik from the Dhara, a dash of the Master at Arms in Rylar, and a fair imitation of a truly irate sergeant he’d known once should do the trick.

He flipped the flap of the adjoining tent open, and stepped inside with what he hoped was a thunderous expression on his face.

While waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light again, he gave the room a good sweep, trying to hit everyone with the look and round them up. If it was his job to play the humourless officer, he was going to do it with vigor.

“A goat?!” he roared into the dim confines of the tent. “Which one of you idiots put a goat on a roof? What kind of a hunt-struck idiot steals a goat and is stupid enough to get caught doing it!” He figured as long as he had to yell at them, he could at least entertain himself.

“I’m your new patrol leader,” he snapped in a more normal tone of voice. “My name’s Lieutenant Delais. And Captain Della has just given me a dressing down for your idiocy practically before I stepped in the door.” He tried to get the full room in his glare, and as his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw five men and two women scattered across the tent, looking just a bit guilty. And none of them were standing at attention like they should have been.

“Forma-shun!” he bellowed out, and he waited for them to move into place, which they did with a sort of lazy indifference. “SAL-ute!” he roared. “What sort of Yoneth-blasted scum did they give me to deal with here! You stand at attention when your officer enters!”

The lack of attention wasn’t anything new for scouts. Since they were assigned at need and were directly under the supervision of a lieutenant, they had none of the usual crusty old sergeants to keep them in place or to keep the formalities up. The sergeants were the usual sticklers for that in the legions.

All in all, it meant that it was a good bit harder to maintain a proper separation of authority between the scout officer and his men, and that could be good or bad depending on the group of scouts. Time would tell for this group. He’d had a pretty relaxed relationship with his last group of scouts, but they’d all been serving under an outstanding captain, and one who’d maintained the sort of authority a scout patrol needed.

Captain Della had struck him as a decent captain, even though he’d only seen her for a moment. The most likely cause of this mess was the recent formation of the legion. There simply hadn’t been enough time for things to get sorted out as they should have been. Apparently that was his job. It seemed he’d have to play sergeant and lieutenant both for a bit.

The group of scouts slunk into place with a few scowls, but at least they moved beneath his glare. It might get more serious yet, but it was a good sign. If they’d only sat there, he’d have had to flog at least one of them as an example. The legions weren’t known for their gentle discipline. They came to attention and slowly saluted him with a few glances back and forth.

“Names?” he barked at them.

A half-hearted chorus of replies came back to them, and he checked them against the list that the captain had given him. Patrig, Kiel, Lessa, Ralen, Beia, Veren, Persil…

“Where’s Mera?” he barked again, glaring down the line. “There’s suppose to be eight of you here.”

The scouts glanced at each other and then back at him, and one of the women, Beia, he thought, offered up, “Out back, sir.”

“What in the name of Solen’s burning sun is she doing out there?” he roared again. He was getting the hang of this.

“Ahh, probably playing with her knives, sir,” one of the men, Veren, said. “She sort of has a thing for them. Talks to them, treats them better than people….” He trailed off.

Well, that was interesting. “Well, go and get her then!” he roared at the man, Veren. “And you too,” he snapped, pointing at the woman who’d spoken, Beia.

The two of them exchanged a glance, saluted him again half-heartedly, and then moved to the back of the tent where there was another flap. Veren coughed loudly before he lifted the flap.

“Ahh, Mera?” he shouted out the flap. “You out there?” There was no response.

He glanced at Beia again, let out a sigh, and then ducked out of the tent.

“By the Hunter’s bow,” he roared again. “You’re supposed to be scouts, not timid children.” This was pathetic. He didn’t know if this Mera was so frightening that they didn’t want to startle her or if they were just lazy.

“The rest of you wait here,” he barked. He stalked to the back of the tent and threw the flap aside as he ducked out.

On the packed grass and dirt between the tents, a woman with a long knife in each hand was spinning around, slashing at unseen targets and tumbling from imaginary blows. Beia and Veren were standing to one side, out of range of her strikes.

Allen stopped a minute to watch her. Her long blond hair was tied back with a strip of leather and steel-backed leather vambraces covered both of her forearms. She was wearing a non-uniform leather tunic that fell down to her thighs, and close-fitting hide breeches beneath that. She had no other armor on, although even the other scouts had been wearing a version of the legion’s infantry armor made out of hardened leather instead of steel. It didn’t work well for a scout to be sneaking around and for the sunlight to sparkle off them every time they moved, or for them to strike noises and sparks off of rocks if they were crawling around.

Something about the young woman, Mera, wasn’t quite right and it caught his attention. Where had he seen knife work like that before….

Sensing some presence watching her, Mera spun around to face him, one of her knives snapping up into a throwing position as the other stayed low to guard her waist. And when the force of her eyes struck him, he knew what it was he’d felt. Her eyes were as clear and cold a blue as the glaciers of the north.

“Leusi,” he muttered. Now he understood the scouts’ hesitation. What the hell was a Leusi woman doing down from the north? He’d never even seen one of their women before, much less one attached to the legions. And if they all had knife-work like that, no wonder the arvalhim left the tribes alone.

There wasn’t much for it though. Either she was a scout in the legion or she wasn’t, and he couldn’t show her any favors. So he pulled out his impression of Urik again.

“What by the burned ass of Solen’s fifth concubine are you doing out here?” he roared at her, staring her straight in the eyes as he paced forward. He ignored the knives she still had ready to throw.

“You were supposed to be in the tent with the rest of the scouts, waiting for the captain, not playing with knives outside!” he roared practically in her face as he bent down towards her. The knives in her hand pressed close against his neck and stomach.

Mera’s cold blue eyes stared up into his for a moment before she seemed to twitch, and then the knives were gone, put back in their sheaths. She didn’t speak a word as she stared up at him.

Her eyes were completely steady, and she continued to be silent as she seemed to wait to see what he’d do next.

“Into the tent!” he roared as he glared at her. He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder to indicate the tent without moving out of her way. He wasn’t going to let a scout get the better of him, Leusi woman or not. First impressions were important, and morale would suffer if he didn’t establish the proper boundaries now.

Her eyes stayed steadily on him for a moment until she seemed to draw back into herself. She nodded sharply and her body curved around to the side of his, almost brushing him as she moved past him towards the tent. The movement accented exactly how shapely that body was, and he forced himself to ignore it as he turned to the other two scouts.

He jerked his thumb back towards the tent again without saying anything, and the two of them gave him a brief salute as they hurried around him and back into the tent.

As he turned around to follow them back in, he wondered if the Leusi woman hadn’t had a hand in the prank with the goat. It looked as if she was going to be a handful.

He pushed the thought of the woman out of his mind as he crossed back through the tent flap. He had a dressing down to finish.

It seemed the farmer was trying to be polite. He looked nervous, and he was holding a rusty spear in one hand. He was dressed a motley assortment of old leather armor and some bits of plate that looked as if it had last seen service in the War of the Three Kings against Leale, eighty-odd years ago.

Allen wondered who’d set up this scam on the road that had held up his caravan. No noble or townsman had the right to block the king’s road or impede the movement of the Legions, and he’d never heard of an attempt like this one before. If he didn’t get out of the way, the fellow was going to get a rude awakening into why you didn’t impede the Guard.

But something didn’t feel right about this. So instead of ordering his men to clear the road, he sat there trying to figure it out.

Allen gestured to the spiked log drawn across the road. “Drag that out of the way, burn it, and go home. Don’t come back and try this again.”

The peasant glanced to the side nervously. “I can’t do that,” he replied, his voice coming out steadier than he looked. “You’ll have to hand over your inventory and step away from the wagons. I’ve got a hundred men behind me here, all of them armed to the teeth and good fighters too.”

Allen glanced at the rag-tag line of badly equipped peasants standing behind the man. Most of them looked like been harried out of the fields for the purpose. Perhaps twenty of them had something resembling respectable weapons. None of them was wearing anything more than a boiled leather jerkin and a few pieces of old plate. He shook his head, wondering at what madness had driven them to these lengths.

He couldn’t let the challenge pass, and he couldn’t let them keep impeding the traffic on the king’s road, but he decided that he was loath to cut through a band of farmers who didn’t know what they were up against and who didn’t seem to know the law they were breaking. These were the people it was his job to protect, and beyond the moral obligation that laid on him, how would it look if the king’s Legions suddenly turned on their own people. Who had put them up to this, he wondered, and why were they doing it? There had to be someone behind it, and they had to know that the king would take this sort of thing badly. Farmers didn’t tend to just leave off their work to stand guard over a road. They had more important things to do.

He rubbed his hand along his saddle bow from where he sat looking down at the farmer. Maybe a noble had gotten it into his head to stir up the peasantry in order to produce just the sort of blood-bath and political uproar that Allen wanted to avoid. If that were the case, attacking these fellows would be playing right into their hands, in a far more delicate game than he was used to.

“Whose idea was this,” he asked the farmer, gesturing over the band of gathered peasants. The rattle-clap armor made them look worse off than they actually were, he decided. They all looked healthy and sun-darkened from the fields. It wouldn’t be hard to take them down, but it would mean the fields in this area would be half-functional for years, at best. “And what is your name?”

“Jerim, sir,” said the farmer, politely. “And the priest is the one who told us this’d be the best way. He explained how the king isn’t looking out for us any longer and how we’d have to do it ourselves. So he suggested we block off the roads like this.” He seemed eager to talk. Perhaps he was aware of the two hundred Guardsmen waiting around the caravan and thought talking was better than fighting. Forty of them were standing in formation behind Allen while the others kept an eye out for ambushes and were scattered back down the line.

“A priest?” Allen asked in disbelief. Since when had a priest made it his job to stir up the citizenry. They were supposed to take care of the people, not give them ideas that would get them killed. “A priest of what god?” He glanced over his shoulder towards the Ghostwood. Maybe there was a connection.

“Our priest follows Kaisa, the Goddess of Luck,” the man replied. “He’s brought luck to our fields for years. We trust him to know what’s right.”

Blood and shadow, Allen thought. How was he supposed to convince a man so obviously used to doing what his priest said and not thinking about it. “You realize that my men and I can clear you off this road with every justification, for impeding traffic on the king’s roads and brigandry? You’ll be hung as thieves.”

The farmer Jerim shifted his weight nervously. “You’ll have a fight on your hands if you try to take us,” he replied. “And I wouldn’t be so confident that you’ll win that one.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “I’d give my lads fair odds against yours any day of the week.”

There was confidence and then there was just blind foolishness, Allen decided. Jerim had both in abundance. He just couldn’t see what was in front of his face. Who was this priest that had put them up to this?

“Why don’t you go and bring your priest out here to talk to me,” he suggested. “Otherwise, I’m going to have to remove you from this road. And don’t ask for the cargo again. It’s going to the northern forts.”

Jerim looked back to his men, but all he got was a few shrugs in response. Apparently they knew when to keep quiet and wait for a higher authority to settle things. If only Jerim had been so obliging as to recognize Allen as that authority and move off the road. He sighed as he glanced up to check the position of the sun. This was taking too long. He’d wanted to be closer to Parm before sunset.

The farmer pointed out a couple of his men, “Jike, Nael, go ask Priest Retsin if he’ll come out here. Tell him there’s a big caravan that wants through.”

The two men nodded at Jerim, and set off at a sort of lazy amble towards town. At the rate they were going, it’d take an hour before they were back.

“Run, don’t walk!” Allen barked after them in his best parade ground voice. It seemed to jolt them into a faster pace for a moment, but then they settled back into a half-jog. He shook his head. At least it was faster than they were moving at first. They’d probably start walking again as soon as they were out of sight.

If he didn’t settle this conflict with the peasants here, they’d just bother the next trader or caravan to come along. And he couldn’t very well leave a group of brigands behind him on the road, however well-mannered they seemed to be. The next Guard officer to come by might not be as good-willed as he was, and there’d be a slaughter here.

He turned back to his men and called out, “Hasir, make sure the men drink something and that the horses are watered while we wait. Pass the word. We’re not making camp here.”

Hasir saluted, and a moment later one of his men was running back towards the caravan with a gratifying turn of speed. At least his men knew how to take a message somewhere.

“Jerim,” he said, looking back at the farmer. “I’m sure you think this is a fine idea, but have you really thought it through? What can you possibly gain from this?”

He gave the farmer a minute to think it through, and then added, “Even I did for some reason let you have the caravan, which I can’t do, some other Guard force would simply come through here and wipe you away without even asking a question, if you waved that spear in its face.”

The farmer started to looked nervous again, shifting his weight from side to side.

“Do you know how many Legions there are in Aciel?” Allen asked, determined to try and explain to the man exactly what he was doing wrong. “How many men that is?”

The farmer shook his head.

“There are over twenty Legions in the kingdom,” Allen replied, his voice hard, and he felt it rising as he spoke. “With five thousand men in each.”

He nodded towards the farmer’s retinue. “The Legions hold back the full might of Karn, defend the border from the northmen’s raids, keep the western border with Leale secure and peaceful, and protect the sea ports from pirates. How can you think that the king will stand for this? How do you expect to stand against the Legions?”

The farmer was looking decidely ill at ease, and glanced back towards his men again.

“You’re committing robbery and treason standing here, and you must know it,” Allen said. The foolhardy boldness of this farmer was not making for a good day. And the blindness of the man. “Do you believe that you are stronger than the armies of Karn, or more vicious than the pirates of the Feral Sea? More dedicated than the northmen, who would raid us to steal our goods and people to sell into slavery?”

He was practically shouting at the farmer now, and the farmer was edging back towards his men, gripping his spear tightly as he glanced around.

“Do you?” he roared at Jerim. His voice rose to a full stentorian bellow. “Tell me! Because that is what you are saying when you threaten the Legions with this nonsense! When you block the king’s highways and try to confiscate his cargo!”

The group of farmers looked a lot less sure of themselves than they had a moment before.

“There are two hundred of the King’s Guard in this supply train!” Allen roared at Jerim. “Even if your men were good enough to stand to toe-to-toe against us, we have twice your numbers! What sort of a blind fool cannot see this? Move out of the way! Go home!”

At about that time, a smooth voice interrupted him. “They cannot do that, I’m afraid.” It sounded educated, and it had a slight burr from the south. Allen left his shouts to hang in the air and turned to look at the source of the interruption.

A middle-aged priest was standing there, dressed in the red robes of Kaisa’s followers. A pendant with a gold flame hung from around his neck, and he had a walking staff in one hand. His face was lean and spare. He was standing near the path that led away from the road towards the town and the two men who’d been sent to fetch him were no where to be seen. He’d probably left them behind to get there faster.

“You’re the priest who put them up to this nonsense?” Allen asked him pointedly, his voice subsiding to a more regular level except for a slight roughness left from the shouting. He’d been hoping the men would scatter, but with this interruption they’d probably got their confidence back. The source of it was standing in front of him.

And as much as he didn’t like interfering with priests and their business, he’d have to try and take it away from them again. He couldn’t have them blocking the road. If nothing else, it was going to get them killed one of these days.

“Your people are obstructing the king’s highway, impeding the movement of his legions, and attempting to rob a supply caravan,” he told the priest. “And they say you put them up to it. You mind explaining why, before I arrest you and take to Parm?”

The farmers rustled about a bit at that, but they didn’t make any threatening moves. Perhaps his speech had cowed them after all.

“All that, in such a short time,” the priest replied. “Well, by all means, arrest me if you think it will do any good.”

Allen studied him for a moment. This was a little too easy. He’d expected some zealot spouting sedition, not someone polite who practically volunteered to be arrested.

Then he shrugged, and gestured to two of his men to come over. “Arrest him,” he said. He’d let the magistrates and the priesthood in Parm deal with the fellow. He didn’t know what to make of him.

The two guards came over and each took the priest by an arm.

“Tell your people to go home if you don’t want them to get hurt,” he told the priest.

The priest nodded to the farmers. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Go on back to farming, and don’t bother the caravans any more.” It sounded like there was an odd echo in his voice when he spoke, and Allen shook his head to get the buzzing sound of it out of his ears.

Jerim and the rest of the farmers listened to him for a moment, and then started moving, picking up their gear and stepping off the road. A dozen of them started dragging the log off the road like he’d asked before.

Allen shook his head again, entirely confused now. Something was wrong here. He’d thought the point of all of this was to cause a political fiasco when the Guard cut its way through the farmers. Now it seemed there was something else going on. Why was the priest giving up so easily? Had he staged the entire thing?

The farmers were already starting to disperse, taking off down the path towards town. They hadn’t even asked the priest why he’d let himself be arrested.

He asked him. “I’d expected you to resist and make this difficult. What’s going on? Did you stage this entire thing just so I’d have a reason to arrest you?”

The priest smiled enigmatically as his hands were tied together by one of the Guards. “I couldn’t very well allow you to hurt the townspeople, could I?” He held up his bound hands, and his voice changed slightly. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to let me out of these ropes?” It felt like there was a pressure on his ears, and very unpleasantly.

The guards started to unwind the rope again, taking it off the priest’s hands. Why had they been tying him up again? There wasn’t any need for it. All this back and forth with the peasants had given Allen a splitting headache, too.

“Let’s go back to the caravan,” the priest suggested aimably. “I’m starved. There’s a place to make camp a couple of miles from here, if we keep going past the town.”

Dinner did sound good, now that Allen thought about it. He gave orders for the caravan to continue on its way.

Later that evening, he was sitting outside his tent when the priest stopped by. He’d wrapped up the inventory with Jaret earlier, and the young man had gone to bed. Nalia was also out of sight, which was a rarity for her.

The headache hadn’t gone away, and it had been getting steadily worse all evening as they made camp. The lack of company was probably a good thing; he didn’t know how conversational he was going to be in this state. He sat there rubbing some oil into his armor as the priest sat down beside him.

The fellow was fairly pleasant he supposed. Why had they picked him up on the road again? This headache was causing him all sorts of difficulty in concentrating. Or had the priest joined them back in Cilis and just needed transport to Parm? He couldn’t recall. It had been a long day without any stops.

“Lieutenant Delais, is it?” the priest asked as he sat down. His name was Retsin or something. Allen ignored him for a minute, but then decided it was better to be polite.

“Evening, priest,” he said, shortly. He couldn’t explain it, but he didn’t like the priest much. Maybe it was something like with the way he wasn’t interested in Nalia. No, that wasn’t quite right. He had the feeling it was something else.

“I suppose I should explain,” the priest said, picking up a small stone from the ground and rubbing it between his hands. “Not that you’ll remember anything I say, but I feel talkative.”

He bounced the stone in his hand a few times before continuing, “I’d wondered if my gift would work on someone with a mark like yours, but it was too late to change plans by the time I saw you. I’m glad to see it hasn’t posed a problem.” He flicked the stone into the grass and folded his hands together. Allen listened to him with half his mind as he worked on his armor with the other. The finer points of Kaisa’s theological dogma weren’t that interesting to him, and he couldn’t say he was paying the best of attention.

“The peasants were just a distraction, to give my gift time to work. I needed you angry, your passions raised.” The priest paused for a moment and then added, “It’s necessary. I can’t persuade anyone who’s calm. I need a hook into their heart.

“You probably wonder why I’m telling you this, but I needed to tell someone. And I thought you might understand with that mark you have. It’s a new gift you see. I only discovered it a few weeks ago. I was preaching to the village about the proper expression of the passions when suddenly they were all listening to me. That had never happened before. And then I found that they would do almost anything I asked them to. So for a while there, I had them repairing a few things that needed to be repaired around the church, donating a little more than they’d used to, things like that. I even did some good. I convinced one man to stop beating his wife, and I had a talk with a few youngsters who were causing some trouble.

“Within a week, everyone in the town was much more satisfied with their lives than they’d been before, and I thought I’d found the reason for the goddess’s gift. But then I found that the effect didn’t last. I had to keep reminding people every few days if I wanted them to do the right thing.

“It was at that point that I thought it was time I took this gift somewhere it could be a little more effective. Somewhere I could reach more people, and people who were more passionate. It seems the deeper the passion you feel, the longer the effect of the persuasion lasts.” The priest tilted his back and watched the stars. “I realized I didn’t even need to say anything to sway people. I could just sort of reach out and touch the passion in them.” He set his hand on Allen’s shoulder. “I could stir it up and direct it. Especially after I’d seen it when it was raised in anger.”

Allen twitched and knocked the hand off his shoulder. He didn’t like the priest touching him, though he couldn’t say why. There was a streak of the talkative zealot in this priest, he decided. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could listen to this theological lecture before he’d willingly trade it for having Nalia following him around. Were all the priests of Kaisa like this? He’d thought they spent their time leading passion-infused rites with their followers and blessing coins to bring people luck.

“What are you going to do in Parm when we get there?” he asked, trying to change the subject. “There’s a temple to Kaisa there, and they might welcome you.” Whenever he could get rid of this priest, it wouldn’t be too soon for him. The man just got under his skin.

“Oh, I have great plans for that temple,” Retsin replied, smiling as he looked up into the stars. “Great plans.”

“Lieutenant,” Nalia said again as she stopped beside him and placed her hand on his arm. She was carrying a basket. “You missed breakfast. I’ve brought you something.”

He took the basket with another pent-up sigh, turning his attention toward her for a moment and away from the Wood that he’d been studying in the distance now that they’d camped. “Thank you, priestess. Have you met Lieutenant Jaret yet?” He nodded to the young man beside him. If he was lucky, maybe he could redirect her attention. He’d feel bad for the boy, but he’d get over it.

The boy couldn’t possibly feel that bad about it. Nalia was a beautiful woman.

She probably didn’t understand why Allen was ignoring her advances, but it hadn’t phased her yet. She seemed to be the patient type. He didn’t quite understand it himself, truth be told. Jaella had been interesting enough. But this priestess just put him off. Maybe he had a jealous goddess and she didn’t want him getting interested in any other gods.

He looked the boy over again while Nalia turned to greet him. There had to be at least ten years’ difference in their respective ages, though he honestly had no clue how old he was. About thirty, he supposed, from looking in the mirror. Maybe a bit older.

“I believe I saw him riding with you earlier, but I don’t believe so,” the priestess said, turning slightly towards the other lieutenant. She offered her hand, and Jaret did a gallant rendition of bowing over it without tripping himself. Apparently they were teaching that in the capital now.

“Lady priestess, a pleasure,” the young man said. He had a quirky sort of smile. Rather like Kilin, Allen’d decided. “If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

Nalia glanced back at Allen for a moment, who was determinedly not watching the two of them, and then turned back to smile at Jaret. She seemed amused. “I will, Lieutenant, you have my word. Perhaps you could tell enlighten me about Lieutenant Delais here sometime. I hear he’s quite well-known with that Mark. And he always seems too busy to tell me any stories.”

“It would be my pleasure, priestess,” the lieutenant replied, glancing at Allen for confirmation, but all he got back was a slight shrug. He continued, “I’ve only known him for a few days, but I heard a few rumors during training that should make for an interesting tale. He’s pretty well-known for some harrowing scouting raids he did last year. Or least the tales make them harrowing.”

Allen tried not to glare at the boy. He’d wanted him to distract the priestess, not help fuel her imagination with wild rumors. Some of the Guardsmen last year had thought it was funny to spin up tales about the daring Marked Guard on solo patrols. It’d gotten a little out of hand. “Priestess,” he said, trying to change the subject. “Why don’t you give us your opinion. What exactly is out there in that Wood?” He nodded at the Ghostwood, which lay only a few hundred yards to the east. Even from here, he could see sharply where the plains ended and the Wood began. The division between the two was stark. There was no brush or shrub that slowly built up as it approach a wood proper, no young trees or seedlings growing in the shade of older trees. In one place there was the grass of the plains, and in the next there was a wall of ancient oaks stretching into the sky. It was as if a blade had made a division between the two.

He wondered what sort of force was in that forest, and what Cerias might do to those who visited. He’d already had a taste of it with the hunter, and he wasn’t inclined to push his luck. Getting strung from a tree wasn’t going to help anyone, him or his goddess. The question was if his goddess would aid him, if he went in to search for her. He wasn’t at all certain about that. The stories said she was asleep. But she had aided him at least twice in the past, with premonitions, and she’d apparently given him the ability to heal without a priestess around. Which, he thought, glancing at Nalia, was a good thing at the moment. He didn’t know if he’d make it out of her tent with any of clothes left intact.

Nalia caught his glance, and gave him a warm smile. Yep, he decided, she was trouble. He’d have to tell Jaret that. No woman should look that good while plotting. It was unfair to the opposition.

Nalia raised her hand to shade her eyes from the sun and studied the forest as she answered his question. “There isn’t much known about the Oakwood. Just myths. It seems to be true enough that those who go into it don’t return, or return mad. Some say that Cerias hunts the ones who enter, and that they can escape if they survive until dawn, but they’ll never have their wits back.” She shook her head, her long auburn hair waving in the sun. “I can’t tell you anything more than that. This is as close as I’ve ever been.”

Allen nodded. “That’s what I’ve heard too, priestess. Do you know anyone who’s tried it? Or do you know if a priestess of Anya has ever tried to heal someone who’s returned from the forest?”

Nalia shook her head again, and offered him a smile. “My apologies, Lieutenant, but I don’t. Perhaps I could make it up to you over dinner? I’ve brought some fresh vegetables from Cilis and one of the drivers has offered to cook a chicken.”

For a moment, just a moment, he was tempted. Fresh food sounded a lot better than the trail rations the Guards had been given to see them through the journey. But he shook his head. “Another time, perhaps, priestess. Thank you for the offer, but I need to eat with my men.” At least that way, they could watch his back and make sure she wasn’t sneaking up on him. Although he might forgive her if she came with a basket of chicken.

The priestess nodded graciously, smiling again. “Of course, Lieutenant. Your devotion to duty becomes you. Do let me know if you change your mind.” She inclined her head lightly to Jaret and him, and walked away with a light sway in her step.

The two men stood watching her leave until Allen muttered to the boy. “That’s a dangerous woman, Jaret.” To unmarried officers, anyway.

“You think so?” the younger lieutenant asked, oblivious to Allen’s tone. “She seems nice. What’d she bring you?”

Allen glanced down to his hand. He’d forgotten the basket she’d given him. He flipped the cloth back from the contents, from which steam was gently rising, and then looked back to the boy. “Hotcakes and cream.” He shook his head. “Any woman that can find fresh cream a week into a march and no cows for miles is definitely a dangerous woman.” And he had no intentions of getting married.

He held the basket up for Jaret. “No point in wasting them though. Hotcake?”

The two of them finished the inventory on the wagons as they passed the basket back and forth, and debated about the forest.

“Have you ever seen a demon?” Jaret asked, glancing over his shoulder towards the Wood.

“There are lots of things out there, Jaret,” he replied, avoiding telling the young man about Cerias’s huntsman visiting him. “I don’t know what they all are. No one I’ve asked does either. Most of them don’t give you any warning before they try to kill you. There are demons in the northern snows, of that I assure you, but the seers up there know how to ward them off. The northmen don’t speak of them much. They think it’ll bring them to you faster. They might be right about that. They say they take the shape of whatever you fear. I’ve also heard there are things in the mountains to the south that hide in the stone beneath your feet, waiting for you to step on them before you’re never seen again.”

“Did you ever see one in the snow?” Jaret asked, looking pensive as he tied down the flap of a wagon.

“One of the arvalhim? No. But they say if you see an animal that’s not acting like it should, watch out. It might be one in disguise. They’re suppose to have human eyes, but to be so evil that you can’t look into them without losing your soul. And if they turn sideways, they’re supposed to disappear. Sometimes you’ll see the bark ripped from trees or great scrapes in the ground, and the northmen say the animal that did it was possessed.” Allen paused to pull another hotcake out of the basket. It was fun to frighten new recruits.

A shout from the north side of the caravan jerked his attention around, and he dropped the hotcake back into the basket. “Jaret!” he called to the young man, who’d been nervously pacing and staring at the forest. “Come on!”

The other lieutenant stood stock still for an instant until his training kicked in, and then he was running beside Allen as the two of them sought out the source of the commotion.

One of the wagons had been completely knocked over, its tires shattered under the weight. He let out a blistering curse when he saw it. Hopefully its axle wasn’t broken and they had some spare tires. The traces and the front tongue were splintered and lying abandoned, but they weren’t broken. The horse team must have been tied to the wheels and broken away, overturning the wagon. He’d have to talk to the drivers again about properly hobbling them. But what had spooked them?

Another shout grabbed his attention, coming from the other side of the wagon, and the two lieutenants sprinted around the corner. Then they froze almost as one, staring at the creature that had one of the drivers pinned under its front claws.

It was an enormous cat. It must have been six feet high at the shoulder, and it was striped with alternating pale and green slashes, causing it to blend into the grass of the prairie and the oncoming dusk.

Allen drew his sword, and next to him, Jaret mimicked him. “Hold steady,” Allen ordered, quietly. He glanced around the area, and found what he was looking for leaning against a wagon a few feet away. He started sliding towards it, moving steadily and calmly.

The great plains cat stared up at him with slitted green eyes that reflected the glow of the campfires the men had started to cook dinner, and its gaze tracked him as he moved.

“There you go, cat,” he muttered as he slid to his right, “keep looking at me.”

His free hand settled on a long shaft, and he slid his sword back into its sheath. The cat tensed up at the sound, and the man on the ground let out a groan as its claws dug into him.

“Hai!” Allen shouted, as he pulled the spear over by him and spun it in a circle over his head, startling the cat into rocking back away from him. It started to drag the man back with it, and Allen shouted at it again. “Hai!”

He didn’t know how wounded the man on the ground was, but if he could get him to the healer in time, he’d probably make it.

He stepped forward, keeping the spear aloft and spinning. He just wanted to scare the cat off, but if it stayed right there, he’d have a clear throw at it. “Hai!” he yelled again, and the cat abandoned the downed man to slink backwards towards the grass, one foot moving at a time, lifting off the earth and settling down again a little ways back. The thing had to weigh at least three hundred pounds.

It continued to crouch there, staring at him and unmoving, so he took a step forward and launched the spear at the cat. It hurtled through the air and seemed just about ready to pierce the cat’s side before the cat twitched and slid aside, causing the spear to miss by a hair. The thing was more agile than he’d given it credit for. Its green eyes stayed fixed on him, and he remembered the stories he’d been telling Jaret a minute before. Eyes that could steal your soul.

He shook his head, hard. They were just foolish stories. And this was just a cat.

The cat chose that moment to spring away, curving back almost the length of its own spine and disappearing into the long grass with a swish of its tail.

He glowered after it for a minute before he shouted for the healer and walked over to retrieve the spear he’d borrowed. He didn’t need plains cats attacking his drivers and scaring the horses, or overturning his wagons.

He was surprised it had attacked at all. There had to be easier targets than a loaded caravan. Maybe there was a shortage of food on the plains. Or maybe the cat just had a taste for men. He’d heard they could get that way sometimes, and this one had apparently been daring enough to risk it.

Nalia came running. She must not have been far away. Good for her, he thought, staying where she might be needed. He appointed two men to guard her in case the cat came back, and then he knelt with her beside the downed driver.

The man’s face was pale. He had the half-beard popular in the western port cities, where it stopped at the jaw and was close-cropped. There were long gashes running down most of his body, especially thick across his chest. It didn’t look like any marks that cat left behind were small enough to call scratches. One of his arms was mangled by the cat’s jaws where he’d apparently been successful in keeping it away from his neck, and there was a deep bite on his leg.

“What’s your name?” Allen asked him, as he tried to stay out of the priestess’s way. She was kneeling on the other side of the man, and her hands were skimming over his body, hovering over the wounds, as she muttered something to herself. Prayers maybe. Though, fires and shadow, she could be swearing about the cat for all he knew. He didn’t really know much about priests. Maybe they didn’t have to pray to heal someone?

“Yease,” the man gasped out. “From Topar.” Allen nodded to himself, his guess about the man’s origins confirmed. Topar was on the western shore of the kingdom, about midway between the borders with the kingdoms of Leale and Karn. He’d been there a few times on the Dhara. Big city, busy.

“Will he be all right?” he asked Nalia.

She glanced at him and shook her head, not interrupting her muttering or stopping her hands, and he took it as a sign to quit asking questions more than as an answer.

“You’ll be fine,” he told the man, looking back down at him. “She’ll put you right back together. Don’t worry about it. A few days easy work riding in a cart maybe.” He looked back up and gestured for one the other drivers to come and keep the man company. Then he stood up and assigned two more Guards to watch them and to get whatever the healer needed.

“Don’t interrupt her,” he said. “Just do what she tells you, and if she needs anything, go and get it.”

“Yes, sir,” the Guards replied. One of them glanced down at the wounded driver, and made a face of sympathy.

Allen gave him a rap on the breastplate with his knuckles to tell him to cut it short, and a sharp shake of his head to tell him not to give the man any doubts about his eventual recovery.

“He’ll be fine,” he repeated, giving the Guard a hard look. From what he could tell looking over the Guard’s shoulder, the man’s bleeding was already slowing, and his breathing was easier. He didn’t know how much of the damage Nalia could repair immediately, but he’d leave her to it.

“Yes, sir,” the Guard replied. Hurie, he thought his name was. A couple of weeks hadn’t been enough time for him to learn all the names of the Guard contingents with him, especially with the doubling of the numbers at Cilis. So he just nodded to him, and then went to look at the damage to the wagon.

Jaret was already there, checking the base of the wagon, and he was surrounded by a squad of Guards, who were picking up broken pieces, untangling the traces, and restacking the crates that had fallen off when it tipped over. The wagons all had an oilcloth tarp that could be pulled over them in bad weather, but this one had been stowed when the wagon had overturned.

“Axle broken?” Allen asked. Hopefully not. They had a few replacement axles in the caravan, but refitting it would be a pain. One of the drivers might have some carpentry skill and be able to plane it into shape. He didn’t know if any of his Guardsmen could do it, but he wouldn’t put it past them. The Guard tended to collect people with an assortment of skills.

“Don’t think so, but we’ll need to put some weight on it to check,” Jaret replied, running his hands along the thick oak shaft that ran between the wheels. “I can’t see any obvious damage to it from here.”

Allen nodded, and called to one of his sergeants who was nearby, “Asair, gather your squad up and bring them over here! We’ll need the help.”

Asair saluted in reply, and jogged off to collect his men.

If they wanted to do this the easy way, they were going to need enough men to pick up the wagon and hold it while they set blocks under it to hold while they replaced the broken wheels. Fortunately only the two wheels on the one side looked damaged. He didn’t know what you called the port side of a wagon, so he settled decided to make things simple and just use the nautical term for it.

In short order, Asair came back with his ten men, and with them and the help of the Guards already there, they got the wagon set back right side-up and resting on a set of crates they’d pulled off the wagon.

A short while later, one of the drivers finished replacing the wheels and they were able to remove the crates and repack the wagon. By the time they finished, the sun had dropped completely, and the full moon was riding high in the sky. It cast an eery luminescence onto the grassy plains below, turning the shadows into long-toothed monsters that leapt at passing men.